Building an all-in-one remote with the Uno

An electronic engineering student with the handle “Victor8o5” has designed an all-in-one remote control using a number of basic hardware components, including an Atmel-based Arduino Uno (Atmel ATmega328 MCU), LCD keypad shield, infrared LED and infrared sensor.

Victor8o5 kicked off his AiO project by gathering the codes of the various remotes around the house using the infrared sensor.

“Once the code has been uploaded and the sensor connected we go to ‘Tools’ and we click on ‘Serial Monitor’ [in the sketch]. You will see a message that says ‘Ready to decode IR!’ now, by pressing any key of the remote while facing the sensor, we will be able to obtain the code,” he explained in a recent Instructables post.

“Once you’ve finished with the code it should be able to work, make sure you place the infrared LED from digital pin 3 to ground, pin 3 is a PWM pin, other pins won’t work. Left and right buttons control the menus, up and down control the submenus, select sends the code attached to the corresponding submenu inside the menu.”

As Victor8o5 notes, several LEDs and a transistor can be used to boost power and range.

“This is because the power supplied by a digital pin is limited to 40mA, enough to light one or two LED’s but not enough to light an array of 5 LED’s for example,” he added.

“The resistor value for the base (middle pin of the transistor) should be around 1-2k. Due the high frequency switching a resistor may not be needed since the LED’s will handle the power. I’ve tried this myself with a standard IR LED and a 5V supply from the digital pin 3 with no problems.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s Instructables page here.

Designing a DIY 125 KHz operated deadbolt

A Maker by the name of “jeepdude48507” has designed a 125 KHz operated deadbolt with Atmel’s ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU) under the hood.

As jeepdude notes, the DIY platform is based on a store-bought electronic deadbolt.

“It was battery operated and had a keypad on the outside to allow entry with a user defined code,” he wrote in a recent Instructables post.

“I removed all of the electronics from the indoor housing keeping only the electric motor and mechanism. The mechanism has a built-in clutch that prevents damage should the motor remain on for too long when cycling. My motor is set for a cycle time of about 1.25 seconds.”

Essentially, the project comprises two boards. One houses the ATmega328 MCU with all input / output connectors attached.

“[This board] allows the resonator, voltage regulator, reset switch, power jack and power conditioning in one convenient place. Power for the entire project is fed into this board from a wall-wart (9VDC @ 1A) AC adapter,” jeepdude48507 explained.

“Power before the 7805 regulator is taken to run the motor. Power after the 7805 regulator and filtering is used to power everything else.”

Meanwhile, the RFID reader component is located on the small green circuit board on the lower left end of the controller board.

“It comes with a rectangular coil of wire which is the antenna. I housed it inside a plastic project box,” he added. “Be sure the use the UART type and not the WEIGAND. Only the UART will work with the code I have written for this project.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.

ATtiny85 operates (fingerprint) garage door opener

A high school sophomore known by the Instructables handle “nodcah” recently designed a DIY fingerprint scanning garage door opener powered by Atmel’s popular ATtiny85 microcontroller (MCU).

Fortunately, the DIY project isn’t limited to just garage doors, allowing Makers and tinkerers to create various types of simple motorized locks by modding the initial Instructables.

Aside from Atmel’s ATtiny85 microcontroller (MCU), key project components include:

• 

Fingerprint scanner and JST connector
• Serial LCD kit with Atmel’s ATmega328 MCU
• 
PNP transistor
• Buzzer
• Speaker wire
• 3D printed case
• Copper tape
• 5V voltage regulator
9V battery and connector
• SPDT limit switch

“The serial LCD kit sold by Sparkfun comes with an ATmega328 MCU to control the LCD. The ATmega has extra processing power to be used for other tasks besides controlling the LCD. Because of this, we can use it as an Arduino to communicate with the fingerprint scanner, send an ATtiny85 commands, control the LCD and use a buzzer to play tones,” nodcah explained in a detailed Instructables post.

“To prevent the module from running continuously, I’ve added a limit switch to detect when the case is closed. If it’s closed, power will not be supplied to it (saves battery power).”

After gathering the above-mentioned materials, drawing the circuit and assembling the serial LCD kit, nodcah builds the circuit boards, programs the ATmega328 and ATtiny85, configures the fingerprint scanner, writes the sketch and 3D prints a basic case.

“To open the garage door I wired my module to the button that normally opens the garage. Instead of a physical connection being made, the module uses a NPN transistor to ‘press’ the button. The wires should first be measured and cut to size, leaving a little extra wire just to be safe,” nodcah added.

“Then, the hard part: soldering the wires from the button to the FPS module. The wires should next be wrapped with a generous amount of tape. To get the signal from the ATmega outside of the garage to the ATtiny inside the garage, three wires (power, ground and signal) will need to be fed through the wall. On my garage, there was a piece of wood that I just drilled right through.”

Last, but certainly not least, nodcah notes that the module’s built-in enroll feature can be used to open the garage and create personalized messages for each profile.

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.

Video: Atmel & Arduino power this robotic hand

A high school student known as “Gabry25” has designed a wirelessly controlled robotic hand using an Atmel-based Arduino LilyPad and an Atmel-powered Arduino Uno.

As Julian Horsey of Geeky Gadgets reports, the wireless robotic hand faithfully reproduces the movements of an accompanying glove worn on another hand.

Aside from the above-mentioned Arduino boards, key project components include:

• Shield to connect the Xbee module
• Robot_Shield
• 5 Flex sensors
• 5 resistors: 47 KΩ
• Battery pack with 3×1.5 V batteries
• LilyPad FTDI adapter (optional)
• A steel structure for the palm of the hand and wood for the fingers
• 5 servomotors
• Fishing wires
• 9 V Battery

“To connect the servomotors I used the Robot_Shield from FuturaElettronica, which has also a switching regulator to power the entire circuit, but you can use any shield made for that,” Gabry25 explained in a recent Instructables post.

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.

ATmega328 on board for near space launch

A Maker named Ugifer recently sent a box of electronics attached to a balloon approximately 124,000 into the air.

As Alan Parekh of Hacked Gadgets reports, the balloon was tracked using the Space Near Us system, with Ugifer creating a custom PCB to keep the circuit as robust and compact as possible.

The finished PCB includes an NTX2 radio module, microSD card, DS18B20 temperature gauge, Ublox GPS, a Honeywell pressure sensor and Atmel’s stalwart ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU).

“[Atmel’s] ATMega328 MCU is a great option because it can be programmed from the very easy Arduino IDE,” Ugifer explained.

“It will also run on 3v3 but only a 8MHz. However that’s plenty of processing power for reading a GPS and running a low baud-rate radio.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here and the HackedGadgets write up here.

EASiLOGO controls your Etch-a-Sketch

Graham Toal has debuted a CNC Etch-a-Sketch robotic platform powered by an Atmel-based Arduino board.

Aside from the board, key project hardware components include:

• Two stepper motors
• 
Two bracket sets
• Two couplers and a 2mm Allen Key
• 12V power supply
• One Adafruit Stepper motor shield

On the software side?

“I considered using remote procedure calls, I thought about implementing Hewlett Packard Graphics Language (HPGL) as used in pen plotters, but in the end for fun I decided to use GCODE as my drawing protocol – GCODE is how laser cutters and 3D printers and many other CNC machines are driven, so it seemed like good experience to learn a bit about how it worked,” Toal explained in a recent Instructables post.

“I found an Arduino GCODE interpreter and modified it to suit my project. Mostly the mods were just to remove the Z-axis code that wasn’t needed (you can’t lift or lower the pen in an etch-a-sketch – when you move, it always draws a line) but the main modification was to remove some machine-dependent stepper-motor-driving code and replace it with portable calls to the Adafruit libraries.”

To create a functional LOGO interpreter, Toal turned to Marcio Passos from Brazil who quickly coded an interface (EASiLOGO) based on the “Papert” LOGO interpreter written in Javascript by Thomas Figg along with an Etch-a-Sketch demo from the Mozilla Developer network.

“Marcio and I modified Papert to use the ‘Node.js’ system which gave the code the ability to drive the serial port so that we could send GCODE commands to the Arduino and make the Etch-a-Sketch draw,” he said.

“In a mammoth 30-hr session over the weekend, we got the LOGO interpreter working and sending drawings to the Etch-a-Sketch.”

So, what’s next for Toal? Well, the Maker says he hopes to polish the software so that anyone can use it without needing to build a physical Etch-a-Sketch robot.

“The emulation of the computer-controlled Etch-a-Sketch on our web page is very accurate and we’ll continue to work on it to make it look and perform even better. Programs that run on the web page will run just as nicely on the real hardware,” he added.

“If you can’t build the hardware, you can do the human simulation we described in the introduction, by writing down the instructions on a piece of paper, and giving them to your kids to execute on a real Etch-a-Sketch toy by hand. It’s a great way to learn to program, even without a computer.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.

Building a tinyAVR pocket sequencer

Earlier this week, Bits & Pieces took a closer look at an ATtiny85-powered ultrasonic ruler designed by a Maker named “bergerab.”

Today, we’re going to get up close and personal with an ATtiny pocket sequencer created by bergerab that uses the very same tinyAVR microcontroller (MCU). 

Built around the popular ATtiny85, the pocket-sized sequencer is fully programmable and usable in a studio setting.

“Besides making a pocket-sized sequencer, my goal of this project was to stretch the uses of the ATtiny chips to show how powerful they really are,” bergerab explained a recent Instructables post.

“This project is great for those interested in music and/or electronics, and by the end you will have one of the smallest, unique sequencers ever made.”

Aside from the ATtiny85 MCU, key project components include:

• 

Perfboard (5 cm by 7 cm)
• Two 10k potentiometers
• Two tactile switch-buttons
• Two two-way switches
• A 7805 voltage regulator
• Two 10uF caps
• One 100uF cap
• One 2k resistor
• 8 LEDs
• 74HC595 shift register
• 1/4 inch audio female jack
• Speaker/buzzer
• 9v Battery (with connector)
• (optional) 5cm by 7cm acrylic sheet

On the software side, bergerab uses a relatively simple sketch to regulate the device.

“In my design of this sequencer, I wanted the user to program the steps right when the device is turned on. To do this I used the ‘setup()’ function, [which] is executed when the ATtiny is initially given power, or if its reset pin is set to LOW,” he continued.

“I added a startup tone (which is a little arpeggio of a c major chord) to notify the user that they are in the frequency programming mode. In the main loop (‘loop()), the ATtiny is told to go through each step, and for each step, light the appropriate LED. Then play the note assigned to that step, at the specified note length. During this, the MCU is checking if the button (analogRead(pot)<30) is pressed. If it is, the program enters a function called ‘setSustain()’. In this function, the user can select the notes length, (via the button and potentiometer).”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.

This ultrasonic ruler is pocket-sized

A Maker known as “bergerab” has created an Atmel-based ultrasonic ruler powered by the popular ATtiny85 microcontroller (MCU).

According to the inventor, the recently posted Instructables prototype is accurate to +/- one centimeter.

“Using this pocket-sized ultrasonic ruler, you can simply point at any object, click a button, and the distance will be displayed on the 8 LED display,” bergerab explained in a meticulously detailed Instructables post.

“This ruler is the smallest (5cm by 7cm) and cheapest (about 5 USD) ultrasonic measuring device available today.”

Aside from Atmel’s versatile ATtiny85 microcontroller, key project components include:

• 74hc595 shift register
• 7805 voltage regulator
• HC-SR04 ultrasonic range sensor
• 330 Ohm resistors (8)
• One tactile-switch button
• One two-way slide switch
• LEDs (8)
• One indicator LED (with 2k resistor)
• Perfboard (5cm by 7cm)
• 9v battery (with connector)

On the software side, bergerab describes the sketch for the circuit as quite small and simple.

“Basically, all the code does is every 500 milliseconds, the distance between the HC-SR04 and an object infront of it is shifted out to the shift register via the data and clock pins attached to the ATtiny85,” he added.

“When the user presses the button on the device, they are actually activating the ‘latch’ on the 74hc595. This illuminates the need for attaching the latch pin to the attiny and attaching a button to the ATtiny85.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.

BuildersBot CNC Router is also a 3D printer

A Maker named “aldricnegrier” has designed an Arduino-based BuildersBot machine, which he describes as a CNC Router that is also capable of 3D printing.

“The BuildersBot works/moves within a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, allowing the machine to position its tool (drill bit or hot end) in any location inside the three-dimensional work space,” aldricnegrier explained in a recent Instructables post.

“The X axis will move the tool from left to right, the Y axis will move the tool from back to forth and finally the Z axis will move the tool up and down inside the work area.”

Key BuildersBot components include:

• 4 Nema 23 Motor dual shaft 425oz-in
• 4 driver 4.2A 128MicroDriver
• 3 power supplies (36V, 36V and 12V)
• 1 Arduino Mega (ATmega2560)
• 1 Ramps 1.4 Board (for CNC milling and 3D printing)
• Smart controller LCD
• 6 end stops
• 5 meter LED Strip with remote control (IR)
• Kress 1050 Spindle MFE

“The Buildersbot electronics enclosure is made from 7 laser cut acrylic parts, [with] all parts fitting together to make the enclosure. The enclosure houses the four Micro Stepping Drivers, three power supplies (36V, 36V and 12V), the Arduino Mega, a Ramps 1.4 board and two fans for cooling,” said aldricnegrier.

“The enclosure has rear holes for all exterior wire connections, [with] all stepper drivers mounted on an acrylic plate and positioned in the middle of the enclosure. The enclosure is closed using zip-ties. For extra fun there are four blue LEDs that light up the enclosure when power is on.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official page here.

DIY tech helps conserve water

A Maker by the name of Tamberg has designed an Augmented Water device that helps save water by turning red and alerting the user when a single liter has been dispensed.

The device – which was designed and built during a recent water hackathon – comprises an Atmel-based Arduino Uno (ATmega328 MCU), flow sensor and colored LED pixels.

Additional components include:

• LiPo battery
• LiPo charger
• 
Jumper wires
• M-M
Tube fitting the sensor
• Plastic test tube
• Zip ties

Tamberg kicks off the project by preparing and testing the neopixel LEDS, configuring the flow sensor and testing a specially coded Arduino sketch. He then creates a tap adapter and fits the various pieces together.

“Attach the two (green) tubes to the flow sensor, with the adapter at the top. Use zip ties to attach the Neopixel strip to the assembly. Make sure the wires are at the upper end (with the adapter),” Tamberg writes in a recent Instructables post.

“Use an additional zip tie to hold the flow sensor wire, then mount the Arduino on top of all this. The Arduino’s upper side should point inwards, [so] make sure the USB port remains accessible for updates.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.